Ancient Chiefdoms of the Tombigbee

Abstract

figurines from the Middle Neolithic may have served as economic contracts or identifying tokens. She does not take up the currently widely-held view that the figurines represent deities in some Old European religion or fertility cult. In a useful final chapter she looks at the finds in regional perspective, listing and illustrating all the known finds from southern Greece. This forms a very convenient compendium of an important body of material. The volume, as well as offering a very thorough documentation of the Franchthi material, constitutes the best survey now available of the figurines from southern Greece, and thus a very useful introduction to Aegean iconography. We still await the final volumes on the pottery and the lithic material from Franchthi, as well as the treatment of the fauna and microfauna (including fishbones) which should give us a clear picture of fishing, hunting, and herding practices over a remarkably long span of time. But already some things are clear. The authors agree that farming came to Franchthi from the Near East: it did not develop altogether locally although there were local contributions. Whether it came by colonization, by demic diffusion, or by acculturation is still open to discussion, but the second of these possibilities currently seems the most likely, although it is only with the ceramic Neolithic that the transition is complete. The great strength of this publication is that the evidence is there, in detail, for us to make our own assessment of this and other issues. No